I’m moving to seattle and want to buy a house (my first house). After doing research i find people are talking about Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond. I have ~300k cash and got 1.1m loan approval from the bank so I guess my budget is 1.4m max. Sometimes i need to drive for Seattle downtown so Sammamish is too far for me. I dont have a child now but preparing for one in 2021. So good school district is a must. 98004 is defenitely the best but i cant afford that. 98033 seems good but the school is not that good i think? To me I’m weighing more on school = traffic > house condition (prefer 2 story houses with new construction styles) > house size (2xxx is enough, moving from the bay area). TC 270K YoE 3 yrs
Redmond’s or Issaquah
Can you give a zip code for Redmond?
98053. Very good elementary schools.
Why not Bellevue
I think only 98004 has the school. 98005/006 is not good?
98005 is still in the school district, lots of affordable (850k-1.2m) options.
Bellevue for sure. No brainer if you have kids.
Any zip code? 98004 is too expensive given my budget.
98006 maybe would have some inventory in that budget and has excellent schools
Schools don’t come into play for a while, but Bellevue district and Lake Washington are generally the two best. Kirkland is in LWSD. North Kirkland is terribly expensive
South Kirkland is better. North Kirland (98034) is ghetto.
Lol you have a very interesting definition of ghetto.
98034
I looked for trader joes, whole foods and where the st3 project is going in, and tried to buy near those areas. I ended up in Woodinville about 30 min from downtown Seattle
98006 ....that's it...look for Somerset and newport hills ...you wont go wrong....rest everything is bad...may b 98005
Newport high and tyee middle
There are no really bad public schools on the eastside. I would ignore the Great Schools / School Digger ratings, they really just measure poverty rate: scores inversely correlate with % receiving free school lunch. Dig into the data and there is far less difference between kids of equivalent background at two different schools. In Bellevue, 98005 has two good elementary schools, and they feed into Chinook/Bellevue High, the same as 98004.
Incidentally, if location matters more than anything then you can definitely get a SFH west of 405 for under $1.4M. Look at sold prices on Redfin in the last 3-6 months, not list prices. Modest homes go fast, but they exist. Personally I don’t think it’s worth the premium, especially south of downtown which can feel a bit more crowded than NW Bellevue/Clyde Hill. In both cases you get more for your money as soon as you cross the freeway east.
how’s it possible to get a 1.1M loan with 270k tc? Especially when the base should only be half of that?
Easily?
hmm... most banks only take base salary for determining the loan amount and given the TC is around 270, my guess is base should be around 160k and with just that 1.1M seems very unlikely